


all the world's a stage

by amatchforyourmadness



Series: war children [1]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Other, Pre-War, Well - Freeform, at least most of them, so sorry for the nonsensicalness, the gaang is chosen by spirits, this is more of a prologue than anything
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-31
Updated: 2020-07-31
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:14:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25555639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amatchforyourmadness/pseuds/amatchforyourmadness
Summary: The spirits chose some of them, others rose to their roles despite the spirits. Either way, these are the children of legend, birthed and raised in war.
Series: war children [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1851970
Comments: 3
Kudos: 42





	all the world's a stage

The world is a stage and the play is badly cast.

If you find yourself so inclined to find where to place blame, point your fingers up towards the sun or down wards to a fish pond or to tunnels earth spirits have dug for lovers to meet or wherever the playful and ever moving air deities reside; after all, they are the ones behind the casting choices. But these are pressing times and there's no waiting they bless us with better suited characters, so the play must go on and those in it must go along with the script to their best extent and hope that everything doesn't burn to the ground in the final act.

Raava is born cradled in the spirit of a young child with gray eyes and a charming smile, whose head is kept cleanly shaved as he grows and whose spark of mischief is carefully tended to by a good humored monk, and they grow together (he for the first time, and her for the six hundred twenty-fifth time) and they are happy and carefree for eleven perfectly delightful years, until Sozin threatens war in the other side of the sea from his fiery throne, and the monks in the temple decide he can no longer be a child. They tell him before the proper age, he grows lonely and isolated and pressured and he turns his hopes to Gyatso and Gyatso alone. When he hears he is to be taken from him he flees in his bison directly into a southern storm and saves himself for the second time that day by freezing themselves into a safe cocoon that steals away years and people and his very choice either to act or not. Above water, Sozin rages from his throne and a comet bleeds red in the sky. Monks die at the southern air temple and in all other air temples that there are.

Agni's chosen comes over eighty four later, when the air nomads are all dead but one and the Avatar has been gone for as long as living people can remember and Azulon sits in the throne of flames, crippling one of the Water Tribes and slowly grating into the Earth Kingdom's territory until they're added appendixes to their great nation and deemed as Colonies and nothing more. He's a small child; pale, golden eyes, wailing loudly to prove his strong lungs, with the blood of Roku and Sozin in his veins and a choice to make in his path in the years to come. They name him Zuko when they raise him to the skies, when they present him to the sun, and Agni almost regrets having done what he has done; the child is small and gentle and held safely in his mother's arms, and those who are loved by the gods have long suffering fates. This will all be stolen from him, he knows, it's the price of his destiny. They don't hold him to the light of the sun when they make him doubt himself or when they call his gentle heart a weakness and corrupt his pure flames with the rage-twisted bending only men with bloody hands believe and break his bonds to Agni almost to no repair. They do not hold him to his light when his grandfather calls for his death, nor when his mother kills him instead, nor when she leaves, nor when he grows, nor when he sneaks into a council room and speaks out of turn. They do present him under his eye in a fight where his father burns his face for loving and respecting him; Zuko doesn't deny the sun as he heals and grows in exile and disgrace, but his back remains turned to Agni for over three years. Agni bears it. He knew what he had done when they presented him that babe, and he will know what he has done when the youngest Fire Lord in history rises to his feet under his light, tragically broken and more whole than his predecessors for it.

One year later, in the southern pole, a boy is born to to the chief of the tribe and his wife. In the same year, in a small Earth Kingdom Island, a girl with strong will and strong arms is born. They name them Sokka and Suki and no gods or spirits have chosen or blessed them, but they should have. They’re the eldest between the children war has allowed to be born int heir patches of land, that small world that is all they know, so they square their shoulders and take adult burdens to their shoulders. The war goes on and takes their mothers, goes on a bit further and takes their soldiers and amidst their soldiers it takes their fathers, and it takes their childhood and their innocence until they take their weapons and fight back. They strike soldiers and they stand against battalions, they look up in defiance at every bender who dares think they aren't worthy opponents only to grin at them when they throw them to the floor. At some point, they meet in the peaceful eye of the hurricane of war and death and just this side of light-heartiness, and they love each other in a world no sane person should love another, knowing they could be taken away. Either way, they thrive on their own merits, on the strength of their wills and their hands and the places that raised them. They tear fleets of war fleets from the skies and laugh over a defeated dictator. No gods or spirits have chosen or blessed them, but they all wish they had.

Tui saves the life of a half stillborn as a kindness; she is prone to those. She did not mean to choose her, did not mean to bless her, did not have any ulterior motives and demanded prices - by that time, she doesn't know, but she saves a girl so she will grow to be a goddess. They name her Yue in her honor, and from time to time, she will come to the pond, her hand in her mother's and kind curiosity in her blue eyes, and she points to La and asks if that's the spirit who saved her life, it's endearing how confused she is when they say no, chide her for pointing at spirits, and guide her gaze to Tui - she thanks her, and smiles like a crescent, promises her life will be something to make her proud of saving. Yue visits her regularly enough that she notices when her father stops coming along, and when her mother stops coming along for wildly different reasons, and as the light fades from her and crescent smiles become polite smiles in a resigned face. She does nothing but circle La, push and pull, and push and pull, and humans always live the same. The girl will live a sheltered and repressed life with no great accomplishments to be spoken of and no recognition of her wise counsel to her father to be recognized, until the day she (as in the moon) is murdered and she (as in he princess) dies, and they both come back, different and the same, united as one to smooth white over the blood moon.

A girl is born to the Fire Lord, young and sharp and bright. No spirits claimed her as their own, none would have; they shy away from her, regard her with equal amounts of pity and disdain. The humans name her Azula, and Agni's chosen smiles down at the baby in his arms like she'll smile when their father holds his fists to his face and burns skin and flesh, and he loves her for a little longer than she loves him as the years sweep them by. There was a fork in her destiny too, a path she could have chosen. She never did feel like it was a choice, deep down, not with what she had been taught, not with what she had been told, so she trails Sozin's steps closer and closer to destruction, flirts with the chaos she can unleash if she kills the right people, if she takes the right places, if she strikes down hope and rise over all others, superior and stronger and safe. She'd have burned the whole world down, if left to her devices, and still someone loved her in the end.

La finds it only fair to pick a chosen on the South Pole if Tui found hers in the North Pole; she's the second born of the chief, and there are no other waterbenders among her people, still he kisses her soul with the sea and lets her grow with the ocean in her eyes and the pull of her element in her blood. Her mother and her father love her, so does her brother, so does the whole tribe, and she's happy for a longer while then he would have expected someone loved by a spirit to be. Then the snow turns black, ships come, the fire nation marches over the ice and into the Igloo and her mother urges her away and her childhood dies along when the chief wails, cradling a limp body. They mourn for a while, as a family, as a tribe, and then her father gathers the men there are left, bids her brother to stay and leaves them behind; she is alone and she is sad and she misses her mom, and childhood dies a more definitive death under the motherly role she is delegated to, but she doesn't shy away from responsibility, she grows under the demand, grows her morals and grows her emotions and something in her grows into an ocean that crashes against rocks and storms inside her chest. Katara finds a boy in the ice, fights a prince in his ship, travels the Earth Kingdom, meets kings and spies and murderers and liars, fights to learn at the North Pole, fights for her life and Aang's and her brother's and Toph's, and rises every time there's an attempt to shove her down. She grows and grows and grows, and like the tide, she can't be stopped and she sweeps over the world.

Oma and Shu guide the badgermoles towards a child, blind and crying and in the tunnels and alone, and love her a little more when the girl smiles, that wide overjoyed smile that can only have followed a child's laugh and hugs the creature's snout. They glance at each other, eyes twinkling with fondness and think of the children they were not allowed to have, and as the badgermole marches ahead, each holds one of the girl's hands and guide her first tentative bending, nudge her to follow their masters and find in the earth the sight her eyes won't allow her. She first bends, truly, in that cave, and her smile is mirrored on the lovers' face every time, as skill grows and she tucks away silk dresses for commoner clothes in order to sneak out into ring fights, as she stands up to her father and supposed teacher, as she boards a flying bison, as she teaches the bridge between worlds what is is to be rooted in something bigger than yourself. Toph never doubts herself for one minute, and they never leave her side, nor does she slip away from their favor. It will be under their eyes that she will grow to defeat enemies and fear almost none; due to her skill that she will bend herself out of iron and rip battleships from the sky. One day, when she crosses from this realm to another, they will hold her properly and tell her they're proud in a world she can hear them, but until then, she will remain the girl with that bright smile and with stones for a spine, unwilling to break.

So the surviving is a struggle and the world is unfair and life is a play and it's badly cast; still, they'll play until anger fades and friends are made and love is found and bonds are broken and life fades into death and their tales become legend.

Pull the curtains, hold your breath, pay attention, the play is starting.

Water, earth, fire, air. Long ago, the four nations lived together in harmony. Now, if you look closely, there's a boy and a bison in an iceberg and two southern water tribe children are walking towards him and they don't know.

Lean closer, watch.


End file.
